


The Morning After

by gabrielsingskaraoke



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bittersweet, Boys In Love, Flashbacks, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-17
Updated: 2016-02-17
Packaged: 2018-05-21 06:06:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6041038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gabrielsingskaraoke/pseuds/gabrielsingskaraoke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky wakes up to an empty bed, and tries to remember what brought him there.</p>
<p>An exploration of how the Winter Soldier deals with moving on, falling in love, and the heaviness of mornings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Morning After

**Author's Note:**

> these two are so gross. I just keep thinking about what different people they've seen each other become. I keep wondering how Bucky could ever leave the Winter Soldier behind. 
> 
> & I guess it's the same way all of us deal with our broken places. We leave them behind as we carry them with us. We survive.

Bucky had killed Steve.

No, The Winter Soldier had terminated Captain America.

No, it didn’t matter.

He had killed Steve. He knew he had. His dreams kept telling him to complete the mission. Complete the mission. So, he had. Bucky had killed Steve. He knew he had.

That was why Steve’s side of the bed was cold.

It was only a matter of time. They had both known it. Bucky was brainwashed. There was no switch to turn it off and make him well again. Bucky was gone. And whoever was here in his place? That man had been triggered, just like Tony had always warned them would happen. That man had killed Steve.

Bucky couldn’t move.

The noise in the kitchen was them. The cleaning crew that always appeared behind him. They whispered Hail Hydra with too much enthusiasm, not enough whisper.

He’d thought about killing them before.

Hadn’t.

They weren’t the mission. They just cleaned up his messed and brought him back – not home. They brought him back to Not Home. He remembered flashes of those spaces. They were cold and hard. It wasn’t flashes of pain that stripped Bucky out of the man he was now. It wasn’t the people who cleaned up the blood on the floor and his arms. They were just doing their job.

Clean the crime scene. Clean the weapon. Avoid the rust.

If he was the weapon, then they were the cloth. The same hands that pulled his trigger were using them to wipe him down. They weren’t the enemy. They were nothing.

This place was nothing too now, Bucky realized. The sheets next to him were rumpled and thrown over the edge of the bed.

Had they struggled here? Had Steve thought he was playing a game? Had it been quick?

This was home. This was their bed. This was where the man who used to be Bucky had thought that he was Bucky again.

It wasn’t true. Of course not. People like them didn’t get happy endings. They were weapons. They were rusty.

Bucky was trying to ignore the banging in the kitchen.

They were touching Steve’s pans. They shouldn’t be touching those. Steve made pasta that tasted like home. He was awake for so long. Bucky didn’t have to suffer through his almost-there’s and first-attempts. Their first dinner was at the table that someone just bumped into.  Even before the memories had come back, eating Steve’s food had reminded him of something distant – something far away – something that you know has been forgotten but you don’t know the name of yet.

Being with Steve had been like trying to remember a word in a foreign language. You know the word in a handful of others, but they aren’t right. They won’t fit into the conversation. They stand out like something almost right but just off center. That had been Bucky. The word that was right in all the ways it needed to be, but couldn’t translate to match the sentence. Steve had been the sentence. Keeping him in place and settled. Steve had tried guiding him in the right way, making him right again. Making him Bucky again.

But a sentence can’t translate itself. It can’t save itself. He couldn’t save himself.

Only one cleaner, Bucky realized. It made sense, in a way. You wouldn’t need someone to take care of evidence. They wouldn’t be able to cover up the assassination of Captain America. They wouldn’t want to. This effort just needed some rearrangement. Everything had to look right.

All they would have to take care of was Bucky.

He’d already proved a faulty weapon. You don’t shoot a gun twice if it’s burned you before.

Bucky closed his eyes. He was done here, he just wanted to sleep.

“Don’t pretend to be asleep, Buck.”

It was his mind playing tricks on him. Nothing was making the edge of the bed dip.

“Wake up Bucky.” There was a hand on his cheek. Bucky wondered if it would make this easier if he pretended. It could be Steve, he supposed. He could pretend it was. Everything could be okay for the moment before. The space of a breath before a  -

Bucky smelled blueberries. He smelled those strange pink oranges that Bucky was obsessed with. He hated those oranges. They reminded him of bananas. They reminded Bucky of himself. They were so close, so off, they were words in the wrong language mashed in and claiming to be the familiar and the same. They were Bucky. They were the person he was now.

Bucky realized the flashbacks were fading away. The mornings were hard spaces. His mind held onto things that used to be. Steve said he woke up in a way that made his mind feel like a snowdrift. Bucky remembered waking up in the snow. It wasn’t like this. Steve didn’t know the warmth that snow took on, he didn’t know what dying there was like. Bucky did. Bucky knew what they felt was different.

They woke up like old men now. It took them time to remember where they were and when they were. Steve had to wake up to fearing the metal draped over his side. He woke to flashes of iron lungs and assassins wearing the face of friends. Bucky woke to emptiness. He woke to the fear that programming can’t be destroyed – just subdued – just delayed.

Small miracles, small comforts. They kept waking up.

Bucky opened his eyes, and found Steve smiling down. The Steve that was now. He was Captain America, and sometimes Bucky reached out expecting to touch the Steve that was but finding the Steve that is – that still is.

“What’s wrong?” Captain– Steve – had a furrow in his brow. He looked nervous. He looked small again. He looked like a language that matched the old Bucky.

Bucky realized he didn’t like this. He didn’t like the language that Steve used to be anymore – it didn’t match with the language that they were now.

“Just a bad dream.”

He reached up to cover Steve’s hand with his own. He wanted him to smile. He wanted to smile back. They didn’t. That wasn’t who they were now.

But it was enough.

 


End file.
